Communities as Classrooms
Community partnerships are transforming how SMU students learn, serve, and shape healthcare.
Students heading into the community to put their classroom-learned skills into practice isn’t new in healthcare education, but Samuel Merritt University’s approach to it is.
The University takes a broader, more comprehensive view to community work: Communities are not simply places SMU serves. They are also essential partners in how the University teaches, learns, and leads
“By integrating community-based learning into the curriculum, we help address pressing health issues through free, accessible services while preparing students to become more compassionate, culturally responsive, and effective healthcare providers when they enter the workforce,” says Sam Alavi, director of SMU’s Center for Community Engagement and the Ethnic Health Institute. “Learning directly alongside diverse communities is far more engaging and transformative than simply studying slides in a classroom because it humanizes the lived experiences behind the health challenges students will address as professionals.”
There’s simply no substitute for learning in the community. Shanice Smith, services manager of behavioral health at Roots Community Health, one of SMU’s community partners, explains it well: “There’s so much you can learn in a classroom, including about diversity and how things connect. But it’s nothing like the real thing. It’s nothing like actually seeing people in their environment. It’s nothing like hearing from people directly about the racism they’re facing, the economic issues they’re dealing with, and how that’s impacting their health.” Below are just a few examples of SMU’s communities-as-classroom approach.
Mental Health Support in East Oakland
During drop-in counseling hours at Roots Community Health, which provides medical and behavioral healthcare to East Oakland residents, anyone can stop by to receive free counseling — teens, older adults, and anyone in between. It’s an opportunity to talk about what’s on their minds, whether that’s anxiety, how to interrupt negative thoughts, or other life challenges.
For SMU students in the Master of Social Work program, those drop-in hours provide the chance to put their classroom-learned clinical skills into real-world practice. “The goal is to meet with clients and learn how to apply the skills of a psychotherapist,” says Sesar Sanchez, MSW ’27. “It helped me get comfortable with the actual use of the techniques with other people and how to listen to them attentively.”
Roots will welcome its second cohort of SMU social work students in the fall, supported by a grant from the Gilead Foundation to Roots Community Health and SMU’s Center for Community Engagement. They’ll work about 16 hours per week, from August to the following April, meeting directly with clients. Students getting their required hours through these internships — which are paid, thanks to grant funding — are doing real therapy work. There’s no simply sitting back and observing others. Clients know the interns are students but they often forget that detail, given the professional, critical role students play. SMU interns help with assessments and outreach and lead both group and individual therapy sessions, including during the drop-in hours.
Thanks to the first group of SMU students, Roots was able to add additional walk-in clinic hours and reach more people. That’s particularly important for the population the agency serves, says Smith. Many community members prefer the convenience of walk-in counseling instead of worrying about life circumstances getting in the way of scheduled appointments.
The benefits of the partnership with SMU extend beyond the tangible additional counseling hours. The interns, Smith says, often bring a fresh, different perspective to situations — one intern, for example, helped build curriculum for one of Roots’ counseling groups, combining financial wellness lessons with mental health.
There’s also a longer-term advantage to Roots’ work with SMU: helping shape future clinicians who are culturally aware of their clients’ experiences. “These populations don’t always have clinicians who culturally affirm their experiences,” Smith says. “So when we bring in students, I feel really passionate about making sure that they learn about the communities, that they learn about the diversity. When they get out in the world, I want them to be equipped to service these types of folks and do a good job at it.”
That’s a perspective that will help students, regardless of whether they ultimately work with the same population of clients. “What you’re going to learn in terms of compassion, empathy, and understanding of people’s experiences you can take into any therapeutic situation, which will make you a better, more well-rounded clinician,” Smith says.
Sergio Serna, LCSW, director of practicum for the MSW program, says he observed the students not only utilizing their therapy skills but also really connecting with clients. The partnership, he says, isn’t simply a chance for students to get the hours they need. It’s also an opportunity to build a substantive relationship with a vital community agency and for students to focus on serving a population that is often underserved. “Any of these experiences that students can have with individuals allows them to be more informed about what it’s like to serve the community,” says Serna.
Tiny Homes, Big Impact in Sacramento
Tucked off Florin Road in southeastern Sacramento is a different kind of shelter for unhoused individuals — a collection of 125 tiny homes, each with a bed, storage space, and heating and air conditioning.
A stepping stone on the way to more permanent housing, the shelter provides clients with more than a safe place to sleep. It uses a comprehensive approach to addressing issues residents face on their way to ending their homelessness, including case management, connection with treatment programs, and, most recently, ongoing health education by nursing students from SMU’s Sacramento campus.
“Not only are we working with individuals experiencing homelessness, but we’re also working with individuals who often have chronic health issues,” says Monica Lopez, program manager for City Net, the nonprofit agency that operates the shelter for Sacramento County. “We have a lot of clients who have not been able to access healthcare in years because they are unhoused and they’re on the streets, focused on trying to survive. With the SMU students, our clients can get proactive education about their medical care.”
Every Thursday, a group of students in the community health nursing class spends the day at the shelter’s community meeting room. Residents are free to stop in — in fact, some are waiting for the students before they arrive — and have their vitals checked, attend a student-led presentation on different health concerns, or meet one-on-one with a student.
Topics covered by the students, whether in a formal presentation or through informal meetings, span a wide range and reflect what residents have asked to learn about. Hygiene basics, ins and outs of hypertension, basic wound care, diabetes management, and proper storage of medication have been among the issues discussed. Students have even worked with residents on finding healthier food options on a very limited budget.
“Our clients have really, really embraced the students because generally nobody has taken the time to educate them on these topics,” says Lopez. “This isn’t our staff’s expertise — we’re here as social workers and case managers — so the students bring a lot of expertise, health interventions, and care that we can’t provide to clients because that’s not the realm of work that we’re in.”
Joselaine Ocumin, ELMSN-FNP ’28, was part of the first cohort to work at the shelter. The time at the shelter, she says, was beneficial on many levels.
“I feel like the experience really helped strengthen my technique interacting with patients, learning how to tone down the scholarly speak, explaining things in more accessible terms so that it can reach a wider audience,” says Ocumin. “And I just found it so valuable to meet people where they’re at. It was a good opportunity to put myself out there, and while I found it daunting at first, this helped shape my perspective as a care provider and how I want to conduct myself with any and all types of client populations.”
Part of that, she says, came from gaining a better understanding of the challenges residents face. By being on-site, she and other students can observe the case managers and learn more about other factors that can influence whether someone seeks care. Do they have insurance? Or would they need to pay out of pocket for a particular procedure? Are they comfortable enough with their hygiene to seek care?
That broader view of nursing is a valuable experience that enhances student understanding, even if they don’t ultimately work in a community setting, says Jeniffer Baker, an adjunct clinical instructor in community health at SMU Sacramento. Students are used to viewing nursing within the constructs of the acute care setting, she says, so applying their skills at the shelter challenges them in ways they’ll carry with them.
“An experience like this informs students of circumstances they may not be aware of,” says Baker. “So the next time they’re in acute care and they get somebody in from a shelter, someone who’s off the streets, someone who’s down on their luck, they can understand and relate a lot more to the behaviors they’re seeing. They can understand the mistrust they’re seeing and try to bridge those gaps when they’re on the acute side. It’s really powerful for them to understand what people go through. It gives them a huge amount of context no matter where they’re working.”
Meet Me at the Market
SMU’s commitment to both serving and learning from the community isn’t limited to class requirements. Through an ongoing partnership with Motivating, Inspiring, Supporting, and Serving Sexually Exploited Youth (MISSSEY) — as part of SMU’s Human Trafficking Prevention and Response initiative supported by grants from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Clorox Foundation — SMU students from across disciplines volunteer to hand out specially curated toiletry bags at the nonprofit’s Meet Me at the Market event in Oakland.
The custom-branded bags are filled with items young women would appreciate, particularly if they’re confronted with housing insecurity or are in need of some self-care. There are hygiene essentials such as deodorant, shampoo, lotion, utensils, and hand sanitizer, and SMU swag such as an eye mask, utensils, and even a stress-relief ball. The free farmers market provides hot meals, groceries, raffles, and access to community resources for young women who are experiencing or at risk of experiencing trafficking and other victimization. The Oakland-based nonprofit is dedicated to helping girls, young women, and gender-expansive youth who have been sexually exploited.
Shelitha Campbell, associate professor of nursing, says the bags not only provide the young women with necessary supplies, but they also serve as conversation starters for SMU students to engage with the young women and discuss personal interests in future health programming and career pathways. Students are learning about issues that this particular population faces in terms of healthcare. How are these youth getting access to care? What challenges have they faced in getting care? What types of healthcare topics would they like to learn more about?
“As the faculty there, my main goal was to ground the students in understanding the sacredness of being in that space and ensuring they understand that we are guests there,” says Campbell. “The market really gives our students an opportunity to interface with individuals who are impacted directly or indirectly by trafficking.”
SMU first had a booth at the market earlier this year. A call for volunteers from the Center for Community Engagement — since staffing the booth isn’t part of a class — drew students from across programs, including nursing, physician assistant, occupational therapy, and social work. Having such a broad range of disciplines represented, says Campbell, helps ensure that the culturally responsive learning that happens at the market spans healthcare fields at SMU.
Boluwatife Laseinde, OTD ’28, hadn’t previously worked with this population, so at first found herself slightly nervous because she didn’t want to do or say anything that would cause further trauma to the young women.
“I know that, for these girls, being around healthcare professionals can be quite stressful and triggering, so I went in anxious but ready to learn,” says Laseinde, who also attended one of SMU’s half-day trainings about human trafficking where MISSSEY was one of the guest presenters. “Actually getting experience with this population and learning from them, I feel like I will be better able to see my clients as a whole, to see their outside experiences. I learned in class that a big portion of a patient’s outcome is their social and physical environment, so knowing that and learning about different populations will help me to better address those factors.”
